'Baby P effect' causing rise in care applications says Douglas

The fallout from the Baby P case has caused a significant rise in the number of care applications according to Anthony Douglas, Chief Executive of CAFCASS.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Douglas stated that there were 369 requests in the 10 days after the trial, compared with 292 in the same period last year - a 26% rise. While there is often a rise in applications after a high profile case he said that the impact of Baby P had been unprecendented.

He also sounded a note of caution that "this heightened state of alert" could lead to some children "getting a greater degree of protection" and lead to "defensive practice" which can lead to "unnecessary and risk-averse interventions" which can harm children and families.

Mr Douglas refers to the number of cases in the 10 days after the Baby P case and compares it to the number of cases in the same period last year. I think there are a number of issues which are likely to have had more impact on the number of proceedings being issued this month than Baby P.

This year we have been coping with the result of significantly reduced applications in the first half of the year whilst social workers and solicitors came to grips with the new demands of the Public Law Outline. This period has now come to an end and cases which have been the subject of voluntary accommodation and/or letters before action for many months are now being issued. I feel this is more likely to have caused the recent surge than Baby P.Nicola Smith 30/11/2008 11:58:26

It has been the case for many years that social workers and local authorities have been under the spotlight and have practised the very opposite of "risk-averse interventions". Whilst all professionals acknowledge that state interference in family life should be kept to a minimum, there is a significant proportion of professionals from all disciplines involved in child protection who see social workers as people with an agenda - to remove children. This is not lost on the social workers on the ground. Just go ask any one of them who has had a modicum of experience in court work relating to children and there is likely to be instant recognition of this attitude.

The truth is, taking a child into care is time consuming, expensive and, with older children at least, of dubious outcome, so it is the last thing most social workers and their local authority employers wish to do.

All of us with experience of this area of law have witnessed bad practice, poor decision making and similar professional problems. I might add that not all of these have been by social workers or local authorities. Bu ti have only very rarely come across bad faith on the part of professionals in this area and I have yet to come across a case that was not worthy of coming before the court, although old age might be affecting my memory in that regard.

The truth of the matter is that if an average parent were to see the parenting that social workers deem "good enough" to enable children to remain at home, they would be shocked. The threshold for state intervention is high - you have to be doing really badly in most cases for a local authority to allocate you a social worker, let alone commence proceedings.

So, as a society we have some decision making to do. How do we want to deal with this issue in the future. Are we content to stay as we are, with some tinkering at the edges, with the occasional child death being the price we pay, or do we want a more interventionist, risk-averse strategy to become the norm?

One thing is for sure, whichever route we go down, social workers and local authorities will still make mistakes and will still be pilloried, either for leaving children at home to die or removing too many children.ukvillafan 26/11/2008 13:22:30

Can there be "too much protection"? When a court is in control of a child's welfare, if any "unnecessary and risk-averse interventions" are made, the filter is the decision of the court. Why does Mr Douglas appear to have a problem with that? Isn't that preferable to what happened to Baby P and Victoria Climbie and Jasmine Beckford and Maria Colwell? Isn't that why the tandem system and current law were introduced?.

Is it seriously being suggested that "defensive practice" and "risk-averse interventions", subject to the control of the court, are more harmful to children and families than the death of a child as the result of a failure to intervene?